BARICELLI_012.jpg_
Marco Baricelli who is leaving ACT after a big career there. He appears in his final ACT play A Moon for the Misbegotten which opens April 28 By Lance Iversen/San Francisco Chronicle Ran on: 04-27-2005
Veteran ACT star Marco Barricelli will be moving to New York after playing James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's &quo;A Moon for the Misbegotten.&quo; Ran on: 04-27-2005
Tom DeLay and President Bush prepare to board Air Force One.
Ran on: 10-09-2007
Marco Barricelli has been named artistic director of the theater company. MANDATORY CREDIT PHOTOG AND SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE.

Timothy Near announced her resignation in September. After 20 years as artistic director of San Jose Repertory Theatre, Near plans to step down by September 2009.

Two weeks after that news broke, the Magic Theatre shocked local observers with the announcement that Artistic Director Chris Smith would be leaving at the end of the current season, his fifth. Not long afterward, Ellen Gavin, the founding artistic director of Brava! for Women in the Arts, let it be known that she'd resigned, to be replaced by newcomer Raelle Myrick-Hodges (see accompanying article). In the interim, Shakespeare Santa Cruz announced its selection of Marco Barricelli to replace departing Artistic Director Paul Whitworth, and Greg Phillips, executive director of San Mateo's Broadway by the Bay, revealed he was leaving to take up the same position at Portland Center Stage in Oregon.

Further afield, Carmel'sPacific Repertory Theatre founding artistic director, Stephen Moorer, has moved over to become executive director, naming Kenneth Kelleher as guest artistic director for 2008. Kelleher has been a mainstay at San Francisco Shakespeare Festival for several seasons - as well as at Shakespeare at Stinson, which changed its name to North Bay Shakespeare last summer and moved inland from Stinson Beach to Novato. This weekend marks an even more significant change with the opening of Bill Rauch's first season as artistic director of the mighty Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.

Whatever changes Rauch makes - his ambitions include a greater commitment to play development and more representation of Asian and Latino voices in the programming - will have a ripple effect throughout the Northwest. Many actors in its company, one of the largest in the country, work frequently in the Bay Area, and many local designers and directors find work there as well. Berkeley Rep and OSF have also shared major co-productions, as with David Edgar's two-play "Continental Divide," directed by the Rep's Tony Taccone, which went on to a successful run in Great Britain.

Not that Bay Area theatergoers are likely to notice many major changes. The shifts in artistic leadership represent a small fraction of the area's more than 200 theater companies. The region's flagship theaters - ACT and Berkeley Rep - have been remarkably stable in artistic and administrative leadership for a long time. Taccone has been artistic director since '97 and is in his 20th year with the Rep, while Managing Director Susie Medak has held that post since 1990. Artistic Director Carey Perloff and Executive Director Heather Kitchen have led ACT since '91 and '96 respectively.

The primary change in ACT's leadership team, the appointment of Associate Artistic Director Pink Pasdar to head its New Works program, does represent what has been an evolving paradigm shift in the region. Though many of our small and midsize companies have made the Bay Area a national center for the development of new plays for decades, that emphasis has been spreading, with new or expanding development programs, from the ones headed by Crowded Fire's Nicholson at TheatreWorks in the south to Marin.

Both ACT and Berkeley Rep have been conducting multimillion-dollar endowment campaigns, in large part dedicated to new-play programs. Their efforts have shown up in productions ranging from Philip Kan Gotanda's large-scale "After the War" and José Rivera's recent "Brainpeople" at ACT to a host of Rep premieres, including Danny Hoch's "Taking Over" and the musical "Passing Strange," now on Broadway.

Whether that emphasis spreads as far south as Santa Cruz remains to be seen. Barricelli says he wants to include more American works among the festival's non-Shakespearean offerings, and his first season, this summer, includes Itamar Moses' recent "Bach at Leipzig." But OSF isn't the only Shakespeare festival with an increasing focus on new plays. The California Shakespeare Theater, enjoying an impressive artistic revival under Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone, has been developing new pieces with companies as diverse as the new-play-focused Campo Santo and Word for Word.

New plays have always been a major part of Brava's work. Last fall Gavin premiered her "Stardust and Empty Wagons," based on interviews with displaced hurricane Katrina survivors. Myrick-Hodges plans to broaden such efforts and increase their frequency at Brava. In Marin, though, Minadakis and his new leadership team - Managing Director Ryan Milette and head of Expanded Programs Josh Costello - are moving the company in what is for it a less familiar direction, in play development programs and giving scripts their second or third production, with the author on site for rewrites, in connection with the National New Play Network (both Minadakis and Milette were connected with the network at their previous theaters).

The Magic may increase its connections with the New Play Network as well, says Managing Director David Jobin, though he emphasizes that decisions about future directions await the appointment of Smith's successor, which will probably be announced in March. Smith's brief tenure - about average for the Magic, which has had a high turnover at the top since the firing of co-founder John Lion in '91 - was marked by a rededication to the development of new plays, even if some proved to be more interesting as celebrity events (with Charles Grodin, Elaine May, Marlo Thomas or Joan Rivers) than on their artistic merits. Jobin says he fully expects the emphasis on new plays to continue unabated.

The company likely to undergo the biggest changes is San Jose Rep, where Near has shaped the artistic vision for most of its history. In seasons that generally mixed "safe," popular choices with more challenging fare, she built a solid enough core audience to enable the Rep to move from a shared home in the old Montgomery Theater to a more spacious and up-to-date new facility of its own design, where she has overseen a steady growth in professional acting and production values.

But the road has been far from smooth. Optimistic plans kept running up against a tightening economy in a series of financial crises that resulted in declining budgets and the curtailment of many programs, including all new play development operations. After even tighter budgets were imposed in an agreement with the city, part of a $2 million bailout of the Rep in '06, Near made no secret of her unhappiness with the resulting reduced production budgets. Her impending departure was widely rumored before she made the announcement.

Since September, Near has turned most of the artistic management over to new associate artistic director, Kirsten Brandt, a capable young director with a marked interest in new works. With Near's official departure still more than a year off, it's far too early to lay odds on Brandt's chances of succeeding her, but Near, who isn't directing any shows at the Rep this year, recently announced that she's moving into "a new position of senior artistic adviser" while she plans her final season. The selection of her successor may have a more far-reaching effect - for the company and throughout the area - than any of the other changes in this season of theatrical flux.

How to get involved

To find out more about the changes at these theaters, or to get involved in their programs, visit their Web sites: